Q for clever people! Can they put wind turbines on top of pylons?

[Kendodd]

Further to the energy crisis, I heard a discussion on the radio that said on land wind turbines would be the quickest way of increasing domestic energy production. The biggest obstacle is nimbyism apparently, planning objections. Well pylons are already an eyesore, connected to the grid, and there are loads of them. Could they not put small turbines on them? I figured this must have been thought of and so there must be some reason it hasn't been done.

Please go easy on my ignorance :)

The weight of the turbines, for starters ...
They are made of ceramic rather than paper.

Think pylons carry hundreds of thousands of volts. Don't think a small wind turbine on top of it would make much of a difference.

I think you can get small drum shape turbines.

Pylon fan here. They are not eyesores. Alas, there is a plan to replace our beautiful, majestic traditional iron pylons with something that actually bears more resemblance to the design of a typical wind-turbine .

Consider the structure of the pylon - it narrows at the top for a reason - it needs to be as light as possible (bearing in mind it carries heavy wires and glass insulators) to avoid the risk of falling or leaning. Adding the weight of a turbine would compromise its structural integrity.

It would also make maintenance more difficult. Pylons have to be manually maintained by staff who climb up to paint and service them. A turbine on the top would make that more difficult.

If we were to adopt this we'd need a completely new design of pylon and its arguable that adding to the height of the pylon would be no less invasive than a separate field of wind turbines.

Here is a BBC news article showing the pylon of the future.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60754357

Pylon fan would make a great user name :)
Thanks for you contribution. I was driving on the motorway looking at them and thinking about this. I thought maybe those tube shaped turbines could fit inside the frames. I know each one would only generate a small amount, but multiplied by the millions of pylons in the country, might be significant.

Those T shaped new pylons look perfect for sticking a turbine on (according to me with zero knowledge of physics).

Lovely answer from pylon fan. These sorts of ideas are great thinking, but the pylon will have been engineered for its specific purpose. The extra weight and change in aerodynamics would end up with a whole new object having to be designed.

I’ve wondered if each house could generate a bit with a mini turbine on the roof, I expect it has been considered and ruled out for cost, noise, low potential electricity gain etc.

My thoughts about pylons came as a way to get around the planning objections that prevent turbines being put up.

I've heard that former Shell employee, Liz Truss is going to grant more oil and gas drilling licences to help solve the energy crisis. And that she wants to rid the countryside of solar farms.

I've seen some quite serious proposals from start ups interested in putting small drum turbines on motorway lighting, to harvest energy from traffic turbulence.

No idea if this makes sense at a physics level and it smacks of a perpetual motion machine to me, which makes me suspicious, but at this stage of my climate change despair I'm prepared to entertain the whackiest ideas🙄